Noteflight Project Reaction

This was my first time using Noteflight, and much like MuseScore, this is a great, free source for music composition and arranging. Although the paid version may offer some extra features, for a free version, this does a great job. From my time working on the above project, I already like this better than Finale Notepad, a free version of Finale but much more limited than what you can do with this free version of Noteflight. One example, you cannot put rehearsal marks in Finale Notepad. Although the piece for this project did not have any rehearsal marks, the ability to add them is there.

The only real issue I had in my time using Noteflight for this project was when entering the lyrics. There are five instances when a word lands on a sustained note that is tied to another note. Typing the word and pressing the dash key will indicate that the word is supposed to be held all the way through, but the dash did not always correctly indicate that. For example, the very last lyric comes on measure 31, which is a dotted half note tied to a quarter note. When I typed the dash to indicate to sustain "two" all the way through, it at first did that, but when I clicked elsewhere in the score, it added more dashes that also went through the rests. I could not figure out how to stop it from doing that, so I just removed the dashes.

Despite that one minor issue, for those who are teaching composition or arranging, this is a valuable tool to have available for students. Two big reasons are that a) it is free, and b) it is all online. That is great because it allows students the ability to work on a project in class, save it, then continue to work on it at home or anywhere outside of the classroom that a student has access to a computer. There is even a mobile version that students can access from their smart phones, and most students these days have smart phones. I did this project on my laptop, which can convert into a tablet, and Noteflight recognized that (as it brought up a virtual keyboard) which made it easier in entering the chords for the piano part. For students with tablets, or if they are at a school that has iPads available to all students, that is a great feature and makes note entry easier. Also, because it is free and easily accessible, it allows students the freedom to compose new music at anytime, which they can then share with their friends, or their teachers to get feedback.